Little fanfare and less candour at the Foreign Office

The preference in Washington is to do these things noisily,
writes Ewen MacAskill. When the
state department embarked on a
major change in foreign policy priorities earlier this year, diplomats were reposted within weeks from relatively comfortable posts in Europe to the Middle East and Asia. The
Foreign Office prefers a quieter approach.

The preference in Washington is to do these things noisily, writes diplomatic editor Ewen MacAskill. When the state department embarked on a major change in foreign policy priorities earlier this year, diplomats were reposted within weeks from relatively comfortable posts in Europe to the Middle East and Asia.

The Foreign Office prefers a quieter approach. Although a similar shift in priorities is also under way in Britain, the repositioning of diplomatic staff is more gradual. The Foreign Office does not do fanfare. This is partly because the Foreign Office has always been averse to being in the public eye, and partly because the Foreign Office does not matter anywhere near as much as the state department. And even within the British government, the Foreign Office, once one of the three great offices of state, does not matter as much as it once did, with Tony Blair's Downing Street having commandeered much of the foreign policy.

It is against this background that Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, made a speech today to Britain's ambassadors, brought back to London to discuss a strategy for future foreign policy. This is accompanied by a 60-page white paper, Active Diplomacy for a Changing World, stressing the need for the Foreign Office to pay more attention to climate change, immigration, consular affairs, the fight for dwindling energy resources - in Britain's case, gas - and the emerging powers of China and India.

It is to be welcomed that the Foreign Office should publish its strategy and that ambassadors, who know the detail, are given an opportunity to meet en masse to question Mr Straw and his ministers. But much of the white paper is extremely vague, full of platitudes and vacuous statements. It would have benefited from even a few paragraphs of reality, such as an admission that there is not much Britain can do to stop Iran's nuclear ambitions other than trying to delay it acquiring a nuclear weapons capability, and that eventually Britain and the US will pull out of Iraq, leaving behind not the beacon for democracy in the MIddle East that Washington had touted but something fragile and messy.

Such honest assessments are kept for behind the doors of the Foreign Office., not for inclusion in a speech by the foreign secretary or a white paper.